“Stabilize the brand at the summit!” In a few words, this is the essential goal—on the watch side—of Frédéric de Narp, the new President and CEO of Harry Winston, who was appointed at the end of December 2009.
This man of products, marketing and communication already has 20 years of watch experience under his belt, of which 17 were spent at Cartier in Asia, Italy, Greece, and then in the USA where he was also President and CEO of Cartier North America. He is thus quite qualified to take over the reins of the New York jeweller and watchmaker.
Among his various duties is an ambitious objective: find the ‘ultimate’ feminine watch that will become the icon of the brand.
Z as in Zalium
It is still too early to evaluate the impact of his arrival at Harry Winston. For the moment, the brand is concentrating on a project started in 2004, the Project Z. ‘Z’ stands for Zalium, an aluminium and zirconium alloy that is very lightweight, hypoallergenic, dark gray in colour and is used by the brand for a series of special sports watches.
This year, with the Project Z6, Harry Winston is proposing a new complication that very few brands offer: the alarm watch. (Among the brands making alarm timepieces are Vulcain, a specialist in this type of watch, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Blancpain, Breguet and Ulysse Nardin.)
The Z6 alarm watch is equipped with a manual-winding movement reserved exclusively for Harry Winston (for the period of one year), as well as two coupled barrels—one for the movement (72 hours of power reserve)—and one for the alarm chime (with a duration of about 20 seconds). The winding of the alarm and the movement are carried out at the same time. The harmonious alarm chime is obtained by the intervention of a hammer fixed to the case that strikes the face of a single-block rectangular bell, which is visible through an opening in the dial.
Great efforts in design and decoration presided over the creation of the piece’s very contemporary dial, composed of 18 levels offering a geometric composition of surfaces decorated with the CÔtes de Genève pattern, vertically silvered and brushed, slate-gray that is brushed, satin-finished, or available in blued steel.
Two off-centred dials intersect, with each featuring its day/night indicator. On the time dial, the hour and minute hands are joined by a disc in the form of a shuriken—known as a ‘throwing star’, hand-held blades used by Japanese Ninjas—on which the movement shows the seconds.
The alarm and time are set using the same crown in both directions. The activation of the alarm function is done using a push-piece at 4 o’clock that is perfectly integrated into the middle case. The Z6 is available in a limited series of 250 pieces with an anthracite dial, and 50 pieces for a silvered dial, reserved for Harry Winston boutiques.
Source: Europa Star April - May 2010 Magazine Issue
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